


You'll be in my heart

by orphan_account



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Family Feels, Family of Choice, Fluff, Gen, raising a child is hard, references to violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 6,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1357555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That fic where Smaug adopts a dwarf child after his attack on Erebor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. first meeting

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what happened with this. I wrote a short thing on tumblr for an AU meme, and people liked it and sent me prompts, and I don't know what's happening but it's making me very happy.
> 
> The original idea was inspired by Thorinsmut's ficlets where Smaug is a benevolent presence in Erebor and young Nori's friend, though I'm not quite taking this story to the same direction uwu

"You don’t look so terrible," the little dwarfling said, and the dragon laughed.

"I have killed and devoured thousands of your king, dwarf," Smaugh answered with a cruel smile.

"Oh." There was a moment of silence. "You must have been very hungry then."

Smaug, who had opened his mouth to devour that child too, stopped and looked at it. It was very small (all dwarves were, but Smaug had a feeling this one was particularly little), and yet it seemed neither particularly scared or afraid of him.

"I was very hungry, yes."

"Then you should have eated beefs. They don’t fight as much, and they’re easier to make grow. Have you ever eated beefs?"

"I have, little one. But I did not come here only for meat. I came here for the gold, and cows do not have gold."

The child appeared to think about that as it looked around itself and gazed upon Smaug’s treasure.

"There’s a lot of gold here. Is it all yours?"

"All of it, to the last coin."

"What are you going to do with it?"

That question puzzled the dragon. Gold wasn’t to be used, but to be possessed. That was why gold existed, why dragon existed. One to be possessed, and the other to possess.

"I own it, little one. I need not do more than that with it."

"Oh. Can we play with it? I wanna play disguise. I’ll be the princess, and you’ll be a king, and we’ve got to fight against orcs to save our good people."

Once more, Smaug hesitated. Parts of him remembered that once upon a time, orcs were his allies, and so he should not have fought against them, not even to pretend.

But he liked being called king.

"Fine. Find me a crown, little one."

He could always eat the child later.


	2. eating mud

It took Smaug a while to figure out how to feed and care for the dwarfling.

For one thing, he was not used to having to worry about anyone else’s food. He still did not _worry_. Worry would have implied that he cared whether the child lived or not. He did _not_.

Dragons did not _care_.

Still, it was… strangely enjoyable to have the little one around. The child was in awe of him. Of course most people where in awe when confronted to a dragon, but whereas most people expressed it by begging for mercy or running for their lives, the child just praised him for being so big and kissed the tip of his tail.

Smaug was only keeping the child alive to see how long it would take it to start fearing him.

The trouble was that dwarven children required a lot of effort. They needed to be fed so often, and apparently they required a greater variety in their food than dragons.

"The meat is bleeding," the child had complained the first time Smaug tried to feed it. "I don’t like it. I want meat that don’t bleed."

"All meat bleed."

"Not if you cook them," the child claimed. "Cooking is when you put a thing in fire, and then you remove it before it’s all black. Sometimes uncle isn’t quick enough, and we eat black meat. I don’t like it either."

It had taken a few attempts to cook meat, rather than to burn it irremediably. But the joy on the child’s face when it could eat at last was pleasant.

But then, it had not been enough. The child had asked for fruit.

"It the things that’s good when you eat them," it had explained. "I think they grow in the dirt of the market."

There was no market left, of course. The child had to do without fruit.

The same happened with honey (“it’s bees’ poo”), with sweets (“they’re like fruit but all sticky and they grow in shops”), with cakes (“I don’t know what they’re made of but they’re good”).

But all Smaug could offer to it was meat. He’d never learned how to acquire any other sort of food. He’d never had any reason to. And certainly, the child could live off the occasional pony or deer that Smaug brought him. Orcs lived on less than that.

Orcs, however, did not start putting dirt in their mouth just to “check the taste”. Repeatedly.

"I want to see if it’s good," the child explained with the most absolute serious. "If it’s good, I can eat it."

"And is it good?" Smaug asked, fascinated despite himself by the odd behaviour of the little creature. Beside, who knew with dwarves…

"Not really," the child sighed with a frown. "It tastes like dirt. But maybe the dirt of another place in the mountain won’t taste like dirt. So I have to try it all."

"How many places have you tried so far?"

The child frowned deeper, and started counting on its fingers. It seemed to require a great level of concentration, and it had to start over a few times.”

"I’ve tried _tons_ of places,” it eventually answered.

"And everywhere, dirt tasted like dirt?"

"Yes," the child said with a firm little nod. "But I’ve got to keep trying. That’s what uncle says. When I don’t want to eat a thing, he says, keep eating, because maybe the next bit will taste good, and if you stop, then you never know how good it is."

Smaug took a moment to admire the child’s uncle and its manipulation powers.

Then he looked around him. There was a lot of rock in the cave, but there was also a _lot_ of dirt. He wondered if tasting it could be bad for the child. If there was so much of it around and dwarves didn’t typical eat it, then it had little chance of being good for them.

And that decided it. Smaug would have to go to the humans, and demand a tribute in fruit, cakes and honey, and _hope_ that it would be enough to make the child stop eating dirt.


	3. story time

"Tell me a story."

Smaug looked down at the child huddled against the warmth of his stomach. It had become a habit. It was strangely pleasing to have the little one against him.

And of course it was the only practical thing to do, or Smaug would _not_ have allowed it. The child was cold when it was not allowed to sleep with Smaug, now that winter had come.

The dragon had not expected the child to last this long. He had expected to grow bored and devour the little creature. But as he had discovered, it was difficult to become bored when the child was constantly full of new ideas.

The orcs had not being that way. Whenever they’d been around him, they had only been scared, and  barely talked to him. The child was not like that. It spoke and ask questions and made request.

As it just had.

"Why would I tell you a story?" Smaug growled. "You are meant to sleep."

"Uncle told me stories when I was sad. Please, tell me a story."

"Are you sad, little one?"

There was a shy nod, and that surprised Smaug. He had seen sadness in orcs, had seen them cry their dead after battle. The child was not crying. How could it be sad if it was not crying?

"I miss my uncle, and my mother," the little one explained. "They were always there and now they’re not here and it’s sad. I wish they were still here ‘cause it’s nice when they’re here. Do you think they’ll come back."

"I doubt it," Smaug replied carefully. Either he had killed them, and they could not come back, or they had fled, and he would _have_ to kill them should they return.

The child nodded sadly, but kept quiet. Smaug raised one heavy claw, and delicately caressed the child’s face.

"I do not know any stories, little one," he confessed. "For tonight, tell me one that you like, and I will try to say it again to you another night."

The little one seemed surprised at the request, but a smile broke on his face and he started talking of someone he called Durin the Deathless.

Smaug listened carefully, determined to remember every single word.


	4. flying

The child never asked out loud, but Smaug heard the question nonetheless. It was written on its face, in its eyes, it was in the way it ran after Smaug, even though the dragon had forbidden him to leave the mountain…

The child wanted to fly.

It would not be the first one. Even the orcs, who had hated and feared Smaug, used to envy him and he took flight. When they were not careful, he overheard them talking about what it would be like, high up in the sky.

The answer was: it felt right. It felt like freedom. It felt as close to perfection as anything could. It felt better than all the gold in the world… at least for a while, until gold started calling to him again.

He loved the sky as much as he loved gold, but one love made him free and the other made him a slave.

And the thing about love was that dragon were greedy creatures. They didn’t share. The gold was his. When he flew, the sky was his too. Smaug had never shared either things.

Until the little one had come into his life.

He shared the gold with it, in a way. He allowed the dwarfling to play with it however it wanted.

If he shared the gold, maybe he could share the sky.

And if the child would not ask…

Smaug did it on an ordinary day. He was almost out of food for the child, and it was time to go get more. As usual, the little one followed him outside, waving at him and wishing him a good trip… 

It shrieked when Smaug quickly turned around and grabbed it in one of his paws before rising in the sky.

Because it was a first time, Smaug did not go too high, nor to fast. He also resisted making anything that might have made the child sick. The little one still screamed a lot at first, before going entirely silent. When that silence lasted too long, Smaug grew worried and decided it had been enough for a first time. He flew back down, and delicately put the child back on the floor,  _gently_ , in case it had fainted…

It had not fainted. It was a little pale, and breathing fast, but it had not fainted. When it looked at Smug, the little one laughed and cried all at once, and pushed himself on shaky legs to come hug the dragon’s tail, the nearest bit of him available.

"Thank you," the child cried. "Thank you,  _thankyouthankyouthankyou_.”

Smaug said nothing, but he smiled, remembering his first flight, when he hadn’t been sure his wings could hold him… 

It was such a waste that the child was a dwarf. It would have made a wonderful dragon.


	5. playing tag

"You want me to hunt you?" Smaug asked, and the child laughed, its voice so loud in the emptiness of Erebor.

"Told you, it’s called tag," the little one corrected. "It’s fun, please? And then when you find me, I’ll look for you!"

The little one’s trust had always been welcomed and refreshing, after centuries of hatred, but at that moment, Smaug it was taking that trust too far. Asking a dragon to hunt you for a game was not a smart move. Smaug had a certain appreciation for the child, but he might not remember that in the middle of a hunt.

He did  _not_  want to risk the life of the little one.

And he would have refused that foolish game if the child had not had such big, pleading eyes. It was lucky that the dwarfling was reasonable and did not ask for much, because there was little that Smaug could have refused it.

In the end, the game was… entertaining, once they figured out how to adapt it a little.

If they played by the child’s normal rules, Smaug could catch it in a single leap, while the child would never managed to touch him in return. To make things more fair, they established that Smaug was not allowed to run, let alone fly. And since he was so big, he was only allowed to catch the child with his left paw.

It was fun. There was no other word for it, this was  _fun_ , and Smaug  _enjoyed_  it. The little one was good at it, managed to climb where Smaug had trouble to follow without flying, or it would turn around at the last moment and run under the dragon’s belly to escape. And it was no less smart when it was its turn to catch Smaug, sliding on the gold to gain speed, hiding in small spaces to jump on him…

The child was smart, so  _smart_ , and by the time it was too tired to go on, they were both laughing.

Laughing.

Smaug was laughing, not  _at_  something, but  _with_  something.

It was new, something he had never even known was possible…

And he was loving it.


	6. Hurt pt1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the child gets hurt
> 
> (warning for a child in pain, and a parent figure considering "mercy" killing)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thiiiiiis was actually written last in the things where the child is hurt, but this is chronologically the first one, so, yep

The child was dying.

It had been an accident, Smaug would never had hurt it on purpose… but accident or not the result was the same: the child was dying, and there was nothing Smaug could do about it. He didn’t know how to care for a wounded creature. Dragon didn’t do that. Dragon rarely were confronted to anything capable of inflicting lasting damage.

Saving the dying was something  _mortals_  did.

Smaug had seen orcs repair one another with plants and sticks and needles. Orcs could have saved the child, but he couldn’t. A dragon was going to fail where orcs could have succeeded.

The child tried to move, and whimpered. The sound felt like a sword going through Smaug’s stomach.

"Do not move," he ordered,  _begged_. “All will be fine.”

Instead of listening, the child moved again, and cried loudly. It was in pain, more pain than its small body should have had to bear, and Smaug couldn’t stand it.

He couldn’t heal the child, but maybe he could make it so that the pain didn’t last.

"Do not move," he repeated, trying to think of the most merciful way to kill his little one. "I will make everything okay, you won’t hurt much longer. Just try to calm down."

The cried were getting louder, but Smaug still couldn’t gather his strength to kill the child. He should have. It was cowardly of him not to do it, because there was nothing he could do for the little one. He wasn’t skilled like the orcs, he couldn’t…

But maybe others could.

Not orcs of course, they’d kill the child on sight. But others… There were no dwarves near the mountains, and Smaug knew better than to risk going near the elves, but the humans of Esgaroth might know what to do. They were mortals, they had to be used to having people wounded…

And even if they couldn’t save the child, then they would be the one to watch it die, and that alone would be something. Smaug couldn’t listen to these broken sobs anymore, but he didn’t have the strength to end them either.

Let the humans deal with it.

"Hold on, little one, I am going to take you somewhere safe."

The child shouted and cried when Smaug carefully took it in his paw, the sound piercing the dragon’s heart, but it couldn’t be helped.

"They will take care of you in Esgaroth."

Smaug walked slowly toward the main door.

If it died, they would know how to give it a ceremony, the way all mortals seemed to do.

"Hold on just a little longer."

It was night, and he could see the faraway light of the town.

If it lived, they would tell it about the monster in the mountain, let it know what Smaug really was.

"You are going to be safe."

Smaug spread his wings and took flight.

One way or another, this was the last time he was seeing the little one.

But if there was any chance that his child could live, then he would take it, and deal with the consequences later.


	7. Hurt pt2

They found the child near the gate of the town, after a dragon night.

They’d become used to dragon nights, with the creature coming to demand some precise food. They did not understand what the monster did with fruit and honey, but they gave it all without a second thought. They’d heard of what happened in other towns near a dragon’s lair, the stories of devoured children and maids, but it didn’t happen in Esgaroth. People who went to the mountain did  _not_  come back, and sometimes the sheep disappeared in the fields, but in their own houses they were  _safe_. And if the price for it was a few apples…

They’d become used to dragon nights, but this time the beast had not demanded anything, had not taken anything that they could see. Instead, in the morning, they’d found a dwarf child.

It was hurt, badly hurt. Broken bones, as if after a bad fall. The child would live, though. Dwarves were sturdy, it took more than a fall to kill one. And the healer was good at her job. She had learned a lot about caring for dwarves, after Erebor had fallen. She’d had no choice, when the dwarves own doctors had not been enough to heal everyone.

Beside, the child seemed determined to survive. He (they’d decided it was a he, but who  _knew_  with dwarves?) didn’t talk a lot, but when he did, it was to say he had to go home. He would take any medicine, accept any orders, if he believed that it would help him go home faster. A model patient, the healer said, and a few of her neighbour grew attached to the child, enough to want to help him go home.

Except that was the problem, of course. The child refused to say were home was.

"Such a strange child," people would tell the healer. "What was he even doing alone here? He’s so young… he must have been travelling with his family. Maybe dwarves were trying to go back to the mountain? There is gold there, and you know what they say about dwarves and gold… But how awful, to take a child with them when the dragon still lives!"

The healer listened, and said nothing.

She was not a woman of many words, but she was one who saw things. And was she saw intrigued her. Because the child did not seem terribly affected by stories of dwarven exiles, by the tales the men of Laketown had learned from their neighbours. Sometimes he recognised one and corrected the way people told it, but that was it.

His eyes only lit up when people told about the dragon. Then he would listen, ask for details. The healer would never forget how horrified the little one had been when he’d understood that the dragon had killed hundreds of people when he had arrived to the mountain. For days after that, the child had been mute, and then for weeks he did not speak of going home… but there was still longing in his eyes as he gazed toward the mountain.

By the time he was healed, he was once more determined to go home.

People forbade it. They said he was too young, they said he had to stay, they said they could take him home if only he would tell them where it was… but the child would not listen.

The stubbornness of dwarves was known, and that little dwarfling seemed the most stubborn of them all.

The healer was a clever woman. The dwarfling had lived with her for months, and she knew that the only way to prevent him from going home would be to lock him up. She did not want that to happen. So one night, she gave him a pack with food and a nice little fur coat to keep warm at night, as well as a few other things.

"Keep safe," she told him. "I’ll show you how to leave the town without being seen, and after that you will be on your own. Be careful, child. The world is a dangerous place."

"Thank you!" the little one shouted, jumping in her arms to hug her. "I was so scared… I thought people would keep me here  _forever_ … I miss him a whole lot, and I thought I’d never see him again! Thank you, thank you so  _much_!”

The healer did not ask who it was the dwarfling had missed. There were questions better left unanswered.

Two weeks after the child had “run away”, the dragon came to Esgaroth again, asking once more for food. It had not done so in months, not since the child had arrived. No one seemed to make a connection between the two events, but the healer smiled to herself.

The child had managed to go home.

* * *

 

Smaug had not expected to ever see the child again. He had not expected it to even survive, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be long until the men told him what sort of creature a dragon really was.

He did not miss the little one.

He did not miss its laughter, did not miss their games, did not miss the strange pleasure of a little creature huddled against him at night.

He did not miss the little one.

He had no  _right_  to miss it, not after killing it.

It had been an accident, but Smaug should have known it would happen. He should not have allowed himself to get attached to that little dwarf, because it could bring nothing good to get attached. Dragons did not get attached. Dragons were cold and cruel and far, far above all other living things.

Dragons were murderers. Even when they did not want to, they were murderers. Smaug had never wished to hurt that child, it had been an accident, he had not noticed that the little one had been near his tail when he’d moved, and now…

He did not miss the little one.

It would have been a loss of time, since the child would never come back. Why would he ever come back?

"Why  _did_  you come back?” Smaug asked the dirty and weary child who had entered the treasure room, though he still wasn’t sure the little one really was there.

But then it smiled, and no illusion could have had that warm, loving smile, and Smaug knew that his child had come back after all.

"I came  _home_.”


	8. Hurt pt3

"Are you going to eat me someday?"

Smaug’s head rose in surprise, and turned to look at the child huddled against his stomach.

The surprise was because he’d thought the little one was asleep, not because of the question. He’d been expecting it for weeks now, since the child had returned from the humans’ town. They had not talked of why the child had been brought there, and they had not talked either of what he’d learned there. Smaug was no fool though, and he’d always known they’d have this conversation eventually.

"Why  _didn_ 't you eated me already?” the child asked, sitting up to stare at the dragon.

Why, indeed. He should have eaten it that first day. He should have eaten it every single day after that first one. He should have eaten it when the child asked for cooked meat, for fruit, for sweets, when the child begged for stories, when it suggested games.

He should have eaten the child when it stopped being an  _it_  to him.

But he hadn’t, and for a good reason.

"No dragon would eat his own child."


	9. pretty eyes

"You have pretty eyes," said the little one.

That was a new one. Smaug had heard many things about his eyes before. They’d been called terrifying, cold, cruel, soul piercing, monstrous…

But never pretty. There was something undignified about  _pretty_.

"They are so big!" the child explained. "So,  _so_  big! bigger than my entire  _head_! And they are  _yellow_!”

"You make it sound as if their colour is of great importance."

"Yellow is a  _good_  colour,” the child explained with a firm nod. “It’s the colour of good things. The sun is yellow, and fire is yellow, and honey is yellow.” The little one gasped. “You have eyes like honey!  _That_ 's why they're so pretty! Anything that's like honey is pretty, because honey is the  _bestest_  thing of all things!”

Smaug laughed. He’d heard his eyes compared to many things in the past, but  _honey_  was a first.

He  _liked_  it.


	10. bad day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sometimes things aren't perfect between Smaug and the kid  
> warning for child/parent argument

The child was, on the whole, an easy child to deal with, for which Smaug was eternally glad.

It did not refuse to eat its vegetables (mostly because Smaug had never been made aware that children were supposed to eat them at all, and so had never asked any to the humans).

It usually didn’t put up too much of a fight to take baths (which meant on a good day, it accepted it gratefully, even asked for it. On a bad day… Smaug did not want to  _think_  about bad days).

It rarely disagreed when it was time to go to bed (never more than three times a week, at least where open revolt was concerned. It was amazing, however, how many questions it suddenly remembered it had to ask when it was time for bed, and how many stories it needed, and how suddenly, it wanted to wash after all).

But sometimes, on occasion, the child was  _difficult_.

"You can’t give me orders!" was a common start for their fights.

Most of the time, Smaug was capable of keeping his calm. But some days… if he was hungry, or tired, or if pieces of his treasure had fallen in the wrong place and needed to be put back where they belonged…

"You can’t give me orders!" the child grunted.

"Asking you that clean up your mess hardly counts as an order."

"Well, you can’t ask me anyway. You’re not my mom! You’re just that big stupid lizard who keeps me around for when you’ll need a snack!"

The accusation left Smaug speechless for a moment.

"You’re just a monster!" the child shouted. "You’ve killed everyone, and you’re a monster, and you can’t tell me to clean up because you’re a monster and I  _hate_ you!”

"Child, this is enough!"

"I hate you, I hate you forever! You’re mean and I hate you! I wish I’d never come here…"

"Then why don’t you  _leave_?” Smaug roared, standing up and opening his wings… and it was stupid to get so angry over this, but he was tired and the idea of the child hating him was  _unbearable_.

And the worse was that the child  _did_  leave.

Smaug didn’t run after it. He knew what sort of bad decision creatures could make when they were scared by him, and Erebor was  _not_  a safe place for someone running without looking were they were going.

Instead, the dragon laid still, and did what dragons did best.

He  _waited_.

* * *

 

It was hours before the child came back, but much to Smaug’s relief, it did return.

It didn’t say anything, and just curled up against the dragon’s stomach.

"I don’t really hate you," it said after a while.

"I am glad."

"And I don’t care that you did bad things. You’re my  _dad_.”

"I am glad of that too. For the record, I do not want you to go away. I would miss you dearly if you did."

The child buried its face against Smaug’s warm scales.

"Are we friends again?" the little one asked, barely a whisper.

Smaug didn’t answer, and instead covered the child with one wing, pulling the dwarfling even closer.


	11. bath time

Erebor was a big place. Even by Smaug’s standards, an entire mountain couldn’t help but be big. Considering he was himself a rather large creature, it was good that his current residence had space.

The downside to it was that there were many places where the child could go play. Many dirty places.

"How do you even manage it?" Smaug grunted, trying not to breathe. "I am starting to suspect that you do it on purpose."

"But I don’t!" the little one promised. "I was just playing in the palace and trying to find new clothes like you said, and then I found the kitchen, and I thought there could be good things left, maybe even honey, and I looked around, and then I found some jars on a shelf and I tried to grab them but the shelf broke, and it was all an accident."

Smaug growled, low enough to make it clear that he was not angry, but that he still didn’t like the situation. Of course it had been an accident. No one would have dropped old fish preserves on their own heads on purpose.

Not  _twice_ , at least.

"You know what this means, of course," Smaug sighed, delicately catching the child in one paw.

"Can’t we just wait and see if the smell goes away on its own?" the child pleaded.

"We have tried that once already," the dragon reminded the child, shuddering at the memory. "It does not work, as we both know. It is time for a bath."

"But I don’t need one!"

Smaug laughed, and the little one smirked.

"Okay, maybe I do need it a little. But not now. I don’t need it right  _now_.”

"If you bathe now, we will have time to go fly a little before sunset."

The child took a moment to think about it, and Smaug started walking toward the hot springs. He was fairly certain that this generous proposition would be accepted, but in any case it couldn’t hurt to be nearer to the water. The child was getting washed, willingly or not.

"I’ll do it," the little one said in the end, when they were already in front of the springs. "But it’s going to be the very quickest bath of them all!"

It wasn’t.

Baths never were quick. It always was a fight to put the little one in the water, but once in, the child never wanted to leave.

Neither did Smaug, if he had to be honest.

"Can we play?" the little one asked, trying and failing to climb on Smaug, the scale made slippery by water. "You’d be… you’d be my great boat and I’d be…"

"A pirate?"

"Oh, no, I was a pirate last time… pick something else!"

Smaug took a long moment to think about it. He always found it difficult to find ideas for games or stories, and usually depended on the child’s imagination and memories. But the dwarfling was asking, and Smaug would do his best to help.

"You could be Ulmo," he suggested after a while.

"Who’s that?" the child asked, having finally managed to get on Smaug’s back.

"I think he commands to all the waters in the world," the dragon explained, more hesitantly than he’d have liked. "He is a valar."

The child stared into Smaug’s eye, clearly unimpressed.

"It means that he can create tempests and waves and sink any ship he wishes to," the dragon claimed, and that at last got him a smile.

"I’ll be him then!" the little one shouted, jumping back in the water. "And you… you’re a ship of pirate and I’m going to drown you a lot! Now, make a tempest, please?"

Smaug almost retorted that he had no reason to make a tempest that was supposed to kill him…  but that would not have been very amusing, whereas standing on his hind legs and dropping himself in their warm little pool to create huge waves was very fun indeed. Judging by its laughter, the child was of a same mind.

It would probably be a long bath, one that might last until after sunset, but Smaug didn’t mind.

He could always take the child flying in the morning.


	12. It's treasure to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> inspired by this: "you finally sneak into the dragon’s cave and find his treasure chest. you open it and there is just a macaroni drawing by the dragon’s son."ITS TREASURE TO MEEEEE" the dragon bellows" -post by batreaux (tumblr)

The child had found stone carving tools.

A remote part of Smaug’s brain wondered if it really was a good idea to let a young dwarf have access to things that were, by definition, capable of cutting through stone, and therefore probably dangerous. He’d never had children before, rarely been in contact with any long enough to really know how to care for them… but he had the distinct memory that orcs talked sometimes about the need to keep the little ones away from sharp things until they were old enough to know that you didn’t put the pointy end in your mouth.

Since the child obviously knew this, Smaug decided that everything was probably quite safe.

And if everything was safe, then it meant Smaug was free to watch the little one try its hand at carving on the walls of the treasure room.

"It’ll be easy to hide if I do something ugly," the little one explained. "We’ll just put a pile of gold in front of it, and it’ll be okay."

Smaug resented the implication that gold could be moved to any point of the room without breaking its current harmony, but he said nothing. He could redecorate if he had to… he didn’t like the idea, but he could find a new way to arrange things, if he really  _had_  to.

But as it turned out, he didn’t have to. The child was… good. Surpisingly so. Certainly, the technique wasn’t perfect, it lacked the perfect aesthetical balance that existed in all of Erebor, but it was still good.

"Have you ever done this before?" he asked. "It looks very nice."

"Mama was a stone carver. She let me play with her things sometimes… it was fun. Do you like it? For  _real_?”

The child’s hopeful face made Smaug smile.

"I like it better than most of what is around here. I would not mind if you redecorated the entire mountain in this fashion."

The little one grinned happily, and set out to do exactly that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeeeey, so, this is the last thing I've written for now on this particular story. So at this point it's... either wait for inspiration to strike again, or write the end that I've planned for it. We'll see which one happens I guess. Feel free to send prompts here or on tumblr though :)


	13. Not at Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The company arrives in Erebor

"The dragon hasn’t been seen for years."

Thorin hadn’t dared hope the dragon had died, not matter what others thought. He knew dragons didn’t die so easily.

But he’d heard others stories too. About how the dragon had become tamed over the years. There were tales that it requested frequent offering of fruits and honey, along with meat. It was said after some time, it even kept a flock of sheep and demanded that a garden be planted a little way out of Laketown for his personal use and enjoyment. And then after a few years, it stopped coming, though people still cared for its flock and its garden. To make sure it never had reasons to come back.

 _This_  was what Thorin was counting on. Smaug most likely wasn’t dead, but he had grown soft, and that could be his undoing.

The dragon hadn’t gone out of the mountain in years.

But it also wasn’t  _inside_ it. ~~~~

"What do you mean the dragon isn’t there?" Thorin hissed at poor Bilbo.

"I mean that I didn’t see it," the hobbit calmly retorted. "And since I’m given to understand he’s fairly big, I assume that it means he’s not home."

"But…"

"There’s something you should see though," Bilbo said, frowning. "It’s. It’s pretty weird. If I tell you, you’ll never believe me so you should come and see it. All of you should, probably. It’s. You’d never believe me if I told you."

"There’s a dragon down there," Dori protested.

"I don’t think there is," Bilbo replied. "I don’t think there’s been a dragon down there in a long time."

This didn’t quite convince the dwarves, but Bilbo insisted so much that Thorin eventually agreed to come down with him, as well as Balin and Dwalin.

Just as Bilbo had claimed, the treasury was empty. Or to be exact, it was full of gold and empty of dragon, even though it was were Smaug should logically have been.

"He might be hiding," Dwalin grunted, glancing around. "Watching us…"

"I really don’t think he is," Bilbo claimed as he kept walking. "You’ll see."

They had no choice but to follow him. As they walked, Thorin noticed that the hobbit’s path hadn’t been chosen at random. He was making them follow a trail of rubies of all shapes, forming a straight line in the gold. That lead them to a great hall, then an equally great room, one where they used to have celebrations and parties…

Thorin gasped.

"Mahal’s furry balls," Dwalin whispered. "Is this some sort of a joke?"

The room’s walls were high and large, on the one that faced the door, was carved a message: “ _Keep your mountain and your gold, dwarves, I have found a treasure more precious than it._ ”

"And it’s not even the strangest thing," Bilbo announced, looking almost amused by the dwarves’ extreme shock. "There’s something under the message… I was hoping to find some sort of a clue, and instead I found… well. Come and see."

What they saw was under the big message, near the ground. There was a dragon carved into the wall, and next to it, something that might have been a dwarf, or a small human with a beard. Next to it was another message: “ _dear mama and grandfather, if you ever come back, don’t worry for me. I’ve gone to see the world with my new adad. He is very nice and he flies and he takes nice care of me. He’s going to show me all the things that exist, and when we come back, I’ll tell you about it._ ”

"I don’t understand," Thorin whispered, brushing his fingers against the carved dragon. "I don’t  _understand_.”

Bilbo tapped on his shoulder, and when the king turned, the hobbit put something in his hands.

"It was at the foot of the wall," Bilbo explained. "I know I should have given it to you straight away, but I thought you really needed to see this first."

Thorin looked down at his hands.

And there was the Arkenstone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is officially the end uwu  
> thanks everyone who left comments and kudos! uwu


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